Gangland News January 30th 2025

[Dr031718]

For Years, Hector Rosario Was A Nassau County Detective On The Bonanno Crime Family Payroll'

An acting Bonanno capo who inducted an undercover informer for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police into the crime family in a videotaped ceremony in Canada in 2015, and a cohort who was arrested with the wiseguy on kingpin drug charges two years later, have teamed up to finger former detective Hector Rosario as a "dirty cop" who committed a slew of crimes for them, Gang Land has learned.

Turncoat wiseguy Damiano (Danny) Zummo has told the feds that Rosario came to his home and warned the mobster not to talk on his cellphone once when he was being investigated. The cop was also paid to conduct a "fake" raid on a rival gambling den run by Genovese gangster Salvatore (Sal the Shoemaker) Rubino more than a decade ago, according to federal court filings.

Rosario has also been fingered as dirty by mob associate Salvatore Russo. He has told the feds that he "was in Sal's Shoe Repair" shop when Rosario "and his associates barged in . . . acting as though they were police officers conducting a search and threatened Rubino about shutting down the illegal gambling," according to the filings. Like Zummo, his partner in the 2017 drug caper, Russo is set to testify at Rosario's upcoming trial in Brooklyn Federal Court, the filings state.

Rosario is not charged with any of the many crimes the turncoats say he committed. He goes on trial next month for obstructing a grand jury investigation into racketeering activity by the Bonanno and Genovese crime families. He is also charged with lying numerous times to FBI agents who quizzed him about Zummo, Sal the Shoemaker, Sal's Shoe Repair and many other topics.

"For years," prosecutors Anna Karamigios, Sophia Suarez and Sean Sherman stated in outlining the evidence they planned to use at trial, "the defendant Hector Rosario was a Nassau County Police Department Detective on the Bonanno crime family's payroll."

Zummo, 51, and Russo, 52, each flipped shortly after they were charged in November of 2017 with selling a kilogram of coke for $38,000 in a Manhattan ice cream parlor that September. They are identified only as CW#1 and CW#2 in the pre-trial filings by the prosecutors.

But sources say Russo and Zummo are the key government witnesses in the case. Russo has a long standing relationship with the detective: In a letter to Russo's sentencing judge in 2016 when he was in the dock for tax evasion, Rosario praised him as an "integral member" of the community and a "dedicated father and husband."

Rosario, 51, was indicted in August of 2022 for lying to the FBI and obstructing a grand jury investigation. That same day, eight Bonanno and Genovese family members and associates, including Rubino, were charged with illegal gambling for running several joints they operated separately in Queens and Long Island — as well as one they ran jointly in Lynbrook.

The eight gangsters have all copped plea deals. But Rosario, a 15-year veteran who was fired from his $160,000 a year job, has maintained his innocence.

Sources say Russo tape recorded about a dozen conversations he had with Rosario. The taped talks began in late 2017, shortly after the feds unsealed indictments of Russo, Zummo and two other gangsters. At the same time, the feds revealed that Zummo had presided over a recorded Bonanno crime family induction in 2015. The taped talks ended in early 2020, shortly before FBI agents questioned Rosario.

Russo "is expected to testify that he directed" Rosario "to shut down Sal's Shoe Repair as well as other illegal gambling parlors operated by the Gambino crime family" and that the Bonanno family "paid the defendant for this work and that the defendant followed through on these requests," the prosecutors wrote.

Russo, they said, is also expected to testify that he personally paid Rosario money to raid Sal's Shoe Repair in 2013 or 2014 and that he saw Rosario "break one of the gambling machines and demand that Rubino" tell him where he could find "Joe Box," the Genovese associate named Joseph Rutigliano who picked up the cash from Rubino, and has copped a plea deal in the case.

During the same time frame, prosecutors Karamigios, Suarez and Sherman wrote, Russo also paid the detective "to attempt to shut down at least two Gambino crime family illegal gambling parlors."

Prosecutors have informed Judge Eric Vitaliano that they plan to call law enforcement witnesses to testify that — around the same time — in May 2014 – Rosario gave a "tip" to other Nassau County cops "about an illegal gambling location operated by the Gambino crime family, although the defendant's own work had nothing to do with such activity."

The former detective also allegedly made several other "false statements to the FBI" during his January 27, 2020 interview. All told, the prosecutors wrote that the planned testimony by Zummo and Russo – as well as taped talks between Russo and Rosario – will help the government establish Rosario's guilt.

Among the allegedly false statements, prosecutors maintain, Rosario "denied using his position as a Nassau County Police Detective to acquire information on 2018 about an individual" whom Russo had "made the defendant believe was cooperating."

"(Rosario) stuck to that lie even after the FBI Special Agents played him a recording of a phone call in which (he) used poorly disguised, coded language to relay to (Russo) the information he had uncovered about the potential cooperator," the prosecutors wrote.

Russo told the feds that he brought Rosario "to his marijuana grow house" in 2018 where the detective offered to help the gangster "transport the marijuana before he got caught with it by law enforcement." The defendant also offered to help Russo "find a buyer" for his weed and helped Russo "obtain heroin and discussed a plan to conduct a fake police raid on a drug dealer in Hempstead in order to obtain drugs and money," the prosecutors wrote.

They argue that Russo's testimony about his drug related interactions with Rosario will help them establish that the detective lied when he told FBI agents he had never been to a marijuana grow house with Russo.

Rosario's "efforts to warn (Zummo) that he was potentially under criminal investigation;" his "willingness to help (Russo) move and sell large quantities of marijuana;" and getting info for Russo about a potential cooperating witness, "explains the depth of the defendant’s relationship and loyalty to the cooperating witnesses" and "tends to show his motive in attempting to obstruct the grand jury investigation in 2020," they wrote.

Rosario's lawyers have asked Vitaliano to eliminate all references to the Mafia from the trial. They argue that the government's planned testimony by Zummo and Russo was "highly prejudicial." Evidence concerning a lengthy federal grand jury investigation "into the Italian mob and its racketeering activity would inflame the jury by setting a wildfire in the jury box," the lawyers argue.

Defense attorneys Louis Freeman, Nadjia Limani, and Kestine Thiele noted that Russo is "a long-time family friend," hence there is no need to cite his affiliation with the Bonanno family in order to show Rosario's "loyalty."

"The Government could argue to the jury," the lawyers wrote, that the "longstanding, trusting relationship" between their client and the witnesses and his "financial opportunity" were enough incentive for "Rosario to engage in alleged criminal activity at their direction. As such," they wrote, "to ensure a fair trial, facts related to the gambling parlors' or the cooperating witnesses' connection to the crime families should be precluded entirely."

Judge Upholds Guilty Verdict In Naked City Loansharking Case

Bonanno soldier John (Bazoo) Ragano says he was acquitted of three counts in his loansharking trial because "the government’s evidence at trial was largely rejected by the jury." He also insists that jurors would have acquitted him of the fourth and last count if they had seen the evidence the judge had stopped him from using in his defense.

Brooklyn Federal Judge Hector Gonzalez disagreed with that, and all of the other reasons Ragano cited in seeking a retrial. The judge told the wiseguy to get ready to be sentenced in six weeks for his conviction of using extortionate means to try and collect payment for a $150,000 loan between November of 2022 and July of 2023.

In upholding the jury's guilty verdict on the main charge in the Naked City Loansharking Case, Gonzalez wrote that it's "well established" that defendants cannot contest a conviction as inconsistent with a "jury's verdict of acquittal on another count."

That applies, even though Ragano's jury acquitted him of three counts — loansharking conspiracy, witness intimidation, and witness tampering. "That's because a court knows only what the jury's verdicts were, not what the jury found," the judge wrote. "It is not within the province of the court to attempt to determine the reason or reasons for verdicts that are inconsistent," he wrote.

Gonzalez also dismissed Ragano's biggest claim: That a text message from witness Vincent Martino to FBI agents showed that Martino lied when he testified that he believed Ragano was a snitch.

In the message sent several days before he encountered Bazoo in a Queens scrap yard, Martino vowed that he could get Bazoo "heated." The ploy worked, as Ragano uttered angry threats and ordered Martino to strip to prove he wasn’t wired.

The Salvage Yard Where Ragano WorkedWhile the text message "may show that Mr. Martino went into the July 5, 2023, encounter with the intent to evoke a reaction from (Ragano)," Gonzalez wrote, "nothing about them shows that Mr. Martino did not actually believe (he) was cooperating with the government."

The judge wrote that specific texts — "Let me get this fucking guy heated" and "I hope Tom has some muscle because when this 350-pound gorilla jumps on me I'm gonna need someone to pull them off" — may show that Martino "did not actually fear" Ragano, they were still irrelevant. It's the defendant's "state of mind" that's relevant, Gonzalez wrote, "not the victim's individual state of mind."

Gonzalez noted that when considering a "motion for a new trial based on the Court's evidentiary rulings, the relevant inquiry is not whether those evidentiary rulings were wrong but whether their effect amounted to a "manifest injustice" involving the wrongful conviction of an innocent defendant.

"As an initial matter," the judge wrote, he found that there "is 'competent, satisfactory, and sufficient evidence' in the record supporting the jury's finding that (Ragano) is guilty of extortionate collection of credit."

So even if he "erred in excluding" the text messages from the case, Gonzalez wrote, "a new trial would not be warranted in this case" because "their exclusion does not amount to 'manifest injustice.'"

And Ragano's contention that "he threatened Mr. Martino" during the July of 2023 confrontation they had at the salvage yard where Bazoo worked, because and "after Mr. Martino accused him of cooperating with the government" is also irrelevant, Gonzalez wrote.

"What matters," the judge wrote, "is that he actually threatened Mr. Martino in connection with the repayment of the loan."

Ragano, whose current 51-month prison term for his conviction for loansharking regarding the same $150,000 loan between February of 2021 and November of 2022, ends in February of 2027, technically faces up to 20 years in prison for his conviction in October.

The New York Waterfront Commission Is Alive And Well

The U.S. Supreme Court put the bi-state waterfront watchdog that Congress created back in 1953 to keep tabs on the New York and New Jersey docks to sleep two years ago. But New York stepped up to create its own version and that entity is now deeply involved in a major investigation of construction industry racketeering by Gambino mobsters and a Garden State businessman, Gang Land has learned.

Sources say that the NY Waterfront Commission, which was created in 2023, is a key player in a joint investigation with the Queens District Attorney's office and the criminal enterprise division of the NYPD. All three units are zeroing in on labor racketeering allegations involving Gambino wiseguy Daniel Fama and an official of a New Jersey based construction industry company.

The sources say that last month NYPD detectives searched Fama's Staten Island home seizing books and records, as well as his cell phone as part of the bid-rigging investigation. The cops are working in conjunction with the Queens DA's office and the NY's Waterfront Commission, not the state's organized crime task force, as Gang Land mistakenly reported on January 16.

The search warrant for the seized materials, dated December 5, 2024, was obtained by veteran assistant district attorney Ajay Chheda, who has been with the Queens DA's office since 2006.

On the same day they seized material from Fama, the NYPD detectives also seized books and records from mobster Caesar Gurino, an old John Gotti pal. Gurino, who was investigated several years ago by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office but never charged, is also a target of the joint probe by the DA's office, the NYPD and the Waterfront Commission.

Since Fama was released from prison back in 2009 after 17 years behind bars for drug dealing and murder, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office has twice failed to nail him on federal charges. The feds did manage to jail Fama — improperly it turned out — for eight months when they wrongly charged him in 2013 with a federal murder charge that they dropped in 2014 when prosecutors determined that the murder charge was bogus.

In 2022, Fama, and several other Gambino family members were implicated in money laundering in a complaint the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office lodged against a longtime mob associate who was convicted of fraud. But Fama was never charged with a crime in that case.

The sources say that in addition to Fama, 60, and Gurino, 71, who are both reputed captains in the crime family, recently inducted Gambino soldier Salvatore Borgia, 45, is also a target of the long-running investigation.

Borgia, who was indicted along with Gambino capo Daniel Marino and eight other mobsters and associates on racketeering charges in 2009, copped a plea deal and was sentenced to 21 months in prison for selling "cocaine and participat(ing) in a bookmaking operation with and for the Gambino Family," according to a court filing in the case.

Following his release from prison in 2013, Borgia completed three years of supervised release without incident.

[Dr031718]

Salvatore Borgia

[chin_gigante]

Hopefully this case goes to trial and Zummo testifies. Might get some interesting information out of him.

[TommyGambino]

Anybody know who Fama was under before his promotion to capo?

[outfit guy]

Zummo and Russo are repulsive. The cuffs probably weren't on them for 5 minutes before cooperation.

[NYNighthawk]

we need another inner mafia war a/la 1991-1993 Columbo war again!

[PaddyWhack]

One of the locations they were using for gambling was Gran Caffe Gelateria in lynbrook , which is owned by Vito and Joseph Palazzolo . Any relation to John Palazzolo?

[Laughmatics]

The YouTube rats say that the mob is dead, yet you have cops risking $160K a year jobs to work with them. I guess that bullshit about there being too many good jobs out there to get involved is just that, bullshit.

[Pmac2]

using a dirty cop to do dirty shit to another member of a crime family I would guess has to get you kicked out or put on shelf. that's as low as it comes. it's snitching. feeding a dirty cop whose gonna feed the info to good cops to get your rivals busted. snitching. the bosses should have those guys kicked rite out. but it sounds like the 2 that were telling the cop to do shit flipped on him first go figure

[Laughmatics]

Yeah, it's a sad day when so-called gangsters are testifying against corrupt cops. That cop is going to be sitting in court staying more true to omerta than the Mafiosi he worked for.

[TSNYC]

Anybody know who Fama was under before his promotion to capo?

I’d assume Joe Lanni.

[Wiseguy]

Anybody know who Fama was under before his promotion to capo?

I’d assume Joe Lanni.

Refresh my memory. Where does this connection between Fama and Lanni come from?

[moneyman]

Anybody know who Fama was under before his promotion to capo?

I’d assume Joe Lanni.

My guess is Lanni or Camuso.

[ng]

Anybody know who Fama was under before his promotion to capo?

I’d assume Joe Lanni.

Refresh my memory. Where does this connection between Fama and Lanni come from?

I was wondering the same thing. Lanni, maybe Camuso seems right but no idea where i made that connection. Maybe one of the old ganglands? If i can find it ill post it here

[Wiseguy]

I'm just theorizing here since I have no idea but, considering Borgia (who was indicted in the 2011 case involving the Marino crew) is a target of the investigation as well, I wonder if Fama is from that crew and has taken it over?